handfeed

handfeed

English

Alternative forms

• hand-feed
• hand feed

Etymology

hand +‎ feed

Verb

handfeed (third-person singular simple present handfeeds, present participle handfeeding, simple past and past participle handfed)

1. (of an animal or machine) To feed by hand.
   • 1878, William O'Brien, Christmas in the Galtees: An Inquiry Into the Condition of the Tenantry of Mr. Nathaniel Buckley‎:

     Walker only saw the place in its deceitful summer promise, when the corn, whose husks were never to fill, was waving in sunshine, when the potato-fields, which were to yield nothing but dwarfed and rotten tubercles, were still gay in blossom, and the cattle, which for nine months of the year have to be housed and handfed with more tenderness than their masters, were luxuriating in sunny grass.

   • 2011, Danielle Wood, Housewife Superstar: The Very Best of Marjorie Bligh‎, page 97:

     Marjorie handfeeds one of her many pets, an orphaned joey, at Campbell Town.

   • 2016, Lajpat R. Ahuja, Agricultural System Models in Field Research and Technology Transfer‎:

     It would be important to keep the total number of cattle handfed on property to a minimum.

Related terms

• handfed